Promotional factors in Champs Sports
Introduction
Champs Sports are retail stores in America functioning as a subsidiary of foot lockers. The company sells products such as equipment, apparel, accessories and footwear (Robinson, 2011). The organization had about 547 stores in 2015 located throughout the American States, Puerto Rico, Canada and Virginia Island. The company mainly locate the stores in the shopping malls to attract a huge number of customers and are 330 square metres on average. The stores have been increasing sales owing to promotional methods that the firm has been using. The number of stores has been increasing to cover the rising demand and the number of customers throughout the states. Champs Sports have been sponsoring different sports activities in the country such as Florida sports annual football game (Robinson, 2011). Promotional factors such as media, advertisement campaigns and integrated marketing communications affect the marketing performance of the organizations and firms depending on how the techniques are applied. Improvement in promotional factors impact the business positively through increased awareness among the clients.
Media
Turning to Blakeman (2014) one finds that most companies employ different media platforms such as newspapers, magazines, televisions, radios and online media such as blogs to create awareness to the esteemed customers. Most organizations recognise media as the best promotional way of attracting most potential customers to the products or services. Champ Sports company has been increasing the awareness of the products through the use of different media channels. The company has increased the mobile sales by 182 percent since the implementation of web design that has increased the awareness of different commodities offered by the firm. Also, the company promotes the products through the application of mobile media. Through the use of mobile media, the firm has increased the number of clients purchasing footwear products and other commodities (Robinson, 2011). Report by the company’s sales manager shows that through the use of mobile media platform, the sales have been increasing throughout. The number of repeat visitors to the company and stores has increased to 170 percent after the application of mobile media. In addition, the organization has been using television network in promoting the products. Blakeman (2014) perceptively states that use of television and other visual aids attracts a large number of potential customers to the products and equipment sold. The sales manager of the company states that due to the use of television media, the number of accessories, footwear and apparel increased by 33 percent in 2015. Sports Champ launched a blog as a media platform. The company updates the blog daily and the new products and features outlined.
The company has increased promotion of the brand through the use of app-based magazine (Robinson, 2011). The magazine promotes the sports lifestyles by use of editorial articles, multimedia and spread content. The company through the use of magazine aims to provide youth athletes and fans the products sold and provision of an inside view of the lives interests and lives of the favoured athletes. The app magazine plays an important role in promoting the products of the company because the media provides attention to the young concerning product and sport inspired.
Sales promotion
Research by Ditzler and Dumas (2012) shows that promotion is an essential component of marketing. Most companies employ different promotional methods for the products and services offered including advertisements, provision of discounts either as a fixed amount or percentage of the purchased products and also after sales services such as transportation. The reason for the use of promotional methods is to create and improve awareness of the products to the clients and increase the company's sales volume. Champs Sports Company uses push strategy, pull strategy and a combination of the two to promote the products. The firm has been using push strategy to develop clients demand for the products through promotion such as giving discounts on the products bought. The company also use pull strategy that uses advertisement to create clients demand for the firm’s products. Turning to Ditzler and Dumas (2012) one finds that the company advertises the products especially through media channels daily to improve the awareness of the existing or newly developed products to the customers. In addition, the company advertises the products daily to increase the percentage of sale by explaining the attributes and benefits obtained from the products sold. The company uses push strategy when the sales have decreased and also when the firm's product faces extreme competition from other sports companies (Robinson, 2011). The company has been promoting the products through sponsoring of different sports activities in the United States.
Integrated marketing communication
According to Shimp and Andrews (2013) integrated marketing communication refers to expansion in the utilisation of both traditional and modern marketing methods with an aim of optimising communication and consistency in conveying information to the stakeholders about the brand of the company. Champs Sports Company achieves integrated marketing communication through a clear understanding of the audience. The firm has been striving to identify the clients demographic factors, interest and behaviour of the audiences in developing the message and choosing the communication tools or channels. Shimp and Andrews (2013) postulate that for an effective integrated marketing communication, the company should have a clear understanding of the target customers, motivation of the clients, the communication method preferred by the customers and also the channel the customers use. Champs Sport achieves integrated marketing communication by addressing the above factors before developing marketing communication.
Champs sports use different media channels to create awareness and in advertising the products. The company has been achieving integrated marketing communications through creating consistent and clear contents that are easily repurposed to various channels the company employ. In addition, the company has been achieving integrated marketing communication through message integration. Shimp and Andrews (2013) argue that the firm should ensure that the components of the marketing campaign are set to establish traffic to the ultimate goal or target whether websites or social network. Furthermore, the firm achieves integrated marketing communication by making sure that all the marketing members or team are functioning in sync. The company has been encouraging team meeting either through an online meeting or physical gathering to ensure that the members are working effectively and also to educate on new ways of relating to the customers and improving the marketing communication of the company. In addition, the firm achieves integrated communication through putting the appropriate attribution and analytic techniques that help to understand how the organization is achieving the target results.
Conclusion
Most organizations employ promotional techniques to improve awareness of the products and services offered to the clients. The promotion techniques include advertisements, provision of discounts among others. Research shows that Champ Sports Company has been applying different promotional strategies to improve sales and increasing the number of potential customers in the country. The number of the company's store increased to meet the demand of different customers in various states of the company. With an aim to reach a huge population, the firm has been making use of different media channels including magazines, mobile media, televisions, and blogs. Besides, Champs Sport offers discounts for the products purchased and improved advertisements technique making the company’s products more competitive. The firm has been engaging in multiple activities to understand the needs and behaviours of the client that help in improving integrated marketing communication.
References
Blakeman, R. (2014). Nontraditional media in marketing and advertising. N.p
Ditzler, P., & Dumas, J. A. (2012). A book sale how-to guide: More money, less stress. Chicago: American Library Association.
Robinson, T. (2011). Philadelphia Eagles. Edina, MN: ABDO Pub.
Shimp, T. A., & Andrews, J. C. (2013). Advertising, promotion, and other aspects of integrated marketing communications. Australia: South-Western.
